Non-Violation Complaints: WTO Issues and Recent Free Trade Agreements

• Main Author: HSU, Locknie
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2005
• Subjects: Trade agreement; World Trade Organization; free trade; International Trade Law; Transnational Law
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/768; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sol_research/article/1767/viewcontent/Non_Violation_Complaints_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) in the last decade has resulted in an accompanying increase in dispute settlement regimes pertaining to those agreements. One obvious consequence is that increasingly, states are exposing themselves to such complaints, and not necessarily with the limitations that have been imposed on the at General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/World Trade Organization (WTO). The inherent ambiguity surrounding non-violation complaints at the WTO, and other risks relating to such complaints, are being multiplied manifold by these FTAs. The non-violation concept appears to have originated even before the GATT came into being. Developing-country FTA parties are therefore even more vulnerable in terms of dispute settlement, under the FTAs. Issues to be expected include how non-violation nullification and impairment will be applied to benefits accruing in areas such as intellectual property rights and rules of origins.